The 5 Best Tips for Writing Better Settings
Start simple, add details, personify, create movement, strike the senses!
Writing settings can be challenging, even more so for those of us who lack any prose (that’s me). I’m not a poetic guy. I merely like words, and from time to time I might write a fairly good scene. But it’s few and far between.
When I’m fishing for a great setting, I follow these five steps to achieving the scene that’ll draw the reader in and make them feel like they’re in my story. It’s essential your reader forgets about their world. If you’re writing horror the audience will be more scared; suspense and they’ll be on the edge of their seats; romance and they’ll fall in love. Writers are basically wizards. This is how you do it:
- Start simple
- Add some detail
- Personify
- Move!
- Strike the senses
Starting Simple
It’s great to start with an eloquent display of your silky-smooth writing skills, but I can’t do that! Instead, I start simple. Boring descriptions with few adjectives and adverbs, just conveying the minimum setting — akin to Hemingway over Dickens (don’t know what I’m talking about? Check out this article!).
